Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Andersonwas an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio. In 1912, Anderson had a nervous breakdown that led him to abandon his business and family to become a writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 September 1876
CityCamden, OH
CountryUnited States of America
Many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg.
People keep on getting married. Evidently hope is eternal in the human breast.
Friends you have, people you love, die and are born again.
Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.
It is all right you're saying you do not need other people, but there are a lot of people who need you.
Wait and wait. Most people's lives are spent waiting.
All of the people of my time were bound with chains. They had forgotten the long fields and the standing corn. They had forgotten the west winds.
The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it histruth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced a falsehood.
People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.
You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
If people did not want their stories told, it would be better for them to keep away from me.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.